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 Charles Rampant wrote:
That starter box looks annoyingly nice. The two sides having differently coloured plastic is genius, a real nod towards the boardgames crowd.

Genius? Games have been doing that for years for different factions. I agree that it is a good idea though to color them close to the "official" painted colors though.

Not naval space games, though - hopefully makes it more accessible to beginners, sort of a middle ground between Star Wars Armada and the other space games out there currently.

Assembly looks very straightforward with no fiddliness. Probably take less than a half hour to be up and running for a non-modeller. Call it the anti-Shadows of Brimstone.

I'll be curious if based on the success of Halo, we see Spartan tool a FSA battle box in Plastic.

Do we know what a "standard" size game is yet, and how much of that a starter set makes up?

Looks like the really giant ships aren't available yet, right - I was confused on the size of things, makes sense that those don't come in the starter

Finally, at GenCon will the Warstore sell the starters for the same price as on their website (plus tax of course)?


Also, Todd at TableWar got back to me about the space mats, they're making more now

Hey Steve,
Thanks for the feedback. We have had a bit of a run on the 6x4' Space and now I have a better idea of why. Just increased manufacturing of it in the current run.
Cheers, Todd @ TABLEWAR(TM)

 RiTides wrote:
Do we know what a "standard" size game is yet, and how much of that a starter set makes up?

From what I've read, the 2 player starter represents a small game if you are using all of the ships. Apparently you can use all of the ships on a 4x4 table for a really quick game and on a 6x4 for a longer one. This is according to the Spartan guys on the M&M podcast.

They were saying that you could easily do a game with 300 minis on the table.

FWIW, in the beasts of war weekender video about Halo Battles posted a few days ago, they specifically said they stress tested the rules with up to 6 starter boxes worth of ships. From the tone of that bit of conversation and the terminology used, it did make that seem like significantly bigger than a normal game.

Dayum, that Warstore offer will be hard to pass up, especially in person at Gencon. Although I have the same problem being at the airport, but my wife and I have a 6-month old to lug around as well. Though we will be driving instead of the shuttle, so could drop it at the car, and have a friend's room at a hotel next door to the con as a drop-off point....and I just got a better paying job....

Nggghh....gonna be hard not to splurge...

 RiTides wrote:
Do we know what a "standard" size game is yet, and how much of that a starter set makes up?

Looks like the really giant ships aren't available yet, right - I was confused on the size of things, makes sense that those don't come in the starter

Yeah they don't have the real capital ships yet. But they specifically mention Trafalgar, Infinity, Phoenix-Class as well as the Covenant Assault Carrier in this Waypoint article.

Got my copy the other day in the UK from www.slayer-gaming.com

20% off and FREE delivery?!?! Bonkers not to really, gave up with Wayland...

Loving the game so far. The rules are by far the best Spartan have done and I'm a HUGE Spartan fan (I play Firestorm and Planetfall religiously) but this is still the best and tightest set they've done. I can see this becoming a very good tournament game.

So this is out now?

 gr1m_dan wrote:
Loving the game so far. The rules are by far the best Spartan have done and I'm a HUGE Spartan fan (I play Firestorm and Planetfall religiously) but this is still the best and tightest set they've done. I can see this becoming a very good tournament game.

Oh man, that is great to hear!

Stormwall - just getting out in the wild, yes. Warstore preorders I think are supposed to ship mid-August, and they'll have some at GenCon.

 Stormwall wrote:
So this is out now?

More or less. It'll start hitting store shelves in the US next week. At least in limited numbers. Only one of my distributors has it as of this morning.


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 gr1m_dan wrote:

Loving the game so far. The rules are by far the best Spartan have done and I'm a HUGE Spartan fan (I play Firestorm and Planetfall religiously) but this is still the best and tightest set they've done. I can see this becoming a very good tournament game.

This is REALLY good to hear. Everything I've read and heard about this game says that it's a real step-up from their usual efforts but it's nice to hear that from somebody who doesn't have a vested interest in the success of the game.

My experience with them as that their rules have a tendency to be a bit... half-baked. Like, good ideas just not fully fleshed out. I think the fact that they had to work with MS and 343 so closely forced them to tighten things up.

Meh.. I expect to be unboxing my own today.

Do you think these will be easy to acquire a few months down the road then?

I don't see why not. It's not like they'll lose the license right after coming out with the first product. If your store does or is able to stock any spartan stuff (firestorm, dystopian, etc) then this should be available with the possible occasional sold out shortage between waves/shipments.

 warboss wrote:

 Charles Rampant wrote:
That starter box looks annoyingly nice. The two sides having differently coloured plastic is genius, a real nod towards the boardgames crowd.

Genius? Games have been doing that for years for different factions. I agree that it is a good idea though to color them close to the "official" painted colors though.

Boardgames have been doing it for years, but not wargames; my meaning was that it is clever to try and bridge the gap a little in that way. Licenced games are always going to require high sales to get over the inherent costs, and so I imagine that Spartan is trying to cast their net as widely as possible.

Interesting to see that this has a tamer explosion mechanic than that in the main Spartan games; so you can't roll six dice and get eighteen successes. That's a shame, but then that was a divisive mechanic, so I'm not surprised to see them tone it down.

I'm really glad to hear that actually - most folks who have reviewed FSA / other Spartan games to me weren't huge fans of that mechanic, so making it less prevalent could be very good for appealing to more people.

RiTides wrote:Do we know what a "standard" size game is yet, and how much of that a starter set makes up?

Looks like the really giant ships aren't available yet, right - I was confused on the size of things, makes sense that those don't come in the starter

Finally, at GenCon will the Warstore sell the starters for the same price as on their website (plus tax of course)?


Also, Todd at TableWar got back to me about the space mats, they're making more now

Hey Steve,
Thanks for the feedback. We have had a bit of a run on the 6x4' Space and now I have a better idea of why. Just increased manufacturing of it in the current run.
Cheers, Todd @ TABLEWAR(TM)

Standard size games seem to require a MFV (maximum fleet value) of 2000. It's really well done, rules wise, with max percentages that are allowed to be spent on certain classes of ships (much like the Fantasy points limits), along with requirements for the sizes of battles before heroes can be included (heroes being like mini fleet commanders), as well as before being allowed to add a second commander.


Having the fleets in my hands, and having read through the rule book and had a game or two, it's hard not to love it. I am getting so incredibly giddy at the idea of being able to have space warfare, large scale ground warfare as well as tactical skirmishes.

If anyone has any questions about the games, I'm happy to answer!

Well same question as above phrased another way: how many points per side are in the starter approximately? Say, without heroes or the like, just ballpark.

I'm eyeing two starters and then maybe one each of the expansion packs, and just trying to get an idea of the scale of games (I have no problem with it being big, btw, just curious ).

Haha, no problem, the UNSC is a little over a thousand points without Spartans or Fleet Commanders, or Heroes, I'll do a tally of the Covenant now, I have their cards in front of me


Automatically Appended Next Post:
My apologies, in my mental tally I added a number twice. The UNSC, without heroes or Fleet Commanders or Spartans is 800 points bang on (using 3 frigates as escorts), and the Covenant is only 20 points less (using 2 corvettes as escorts)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
With the additional models from the Warstore being offered for Gencon, the UNSC stands at a might 1000 points exactly and the Covenant at 1020.

The factions play differently as well, the UNSC relies on distance and facing forwards, the covenant have cloaking and excel at shorter ranges, especially as then they can launch a myriad of boarding actions. The comparatively lumbering ships of the UNSC will struggle to get close enough to launch their boarders if the Covenant player wants to stay out of range, however, to do so would mean to deny the close range advantages that Plasma weaponry offers.

Wow, that's more points than I was expecting for a starter set - very cool . Thank you very much for the fast answer!!

It was my pleasure!

In other news, I am getting very, very excited about Gencon! Tomorrow is the 30th (for Australia at least), so not long to go! I expect we'll here more about Halo Fleet Battles, obviously, but also ground combat. I'm expecting we won't get any news of the far off skirmish game, but I can still dream, can't I? I'm really hoping to get some ODSTs shown, hopefully they come with some used pods that would add to the 'just dropped' look.

I also want to say how professional I feel Spartan has been about this all. They have been giving out information well in advance and really letting people know what's happening in an ordered fashion. while of course I'd love to know more at a given moment, they have never really been out of touch. The free shipping I ordered from them was actually requiring signature and shipped by a courier, not Australia Post, which I thought was really a top service.

The models are crisp and serve the job well, the coloured plastic a long needed addition and (in my opinion) likely to promote non-wargamers giving it a go.

On the flip side, I don't really believe the box needed to be that large. The box contents could essentially fit in half the space; in fact, it demonstrably could if they had of printed the terrain markers on 4 A5 sheets instead of 2 A4. I can see why they would do this, as if it were half the size I think that people would question the value, and the ships (due to their straight edges) really do compress down deceptively well. Regardless, the value is great, the models beautiful, the rules tight, the shipping excellent, the behind the scenes podcasts and interviews around the internet welcome. I'm very pleased!

 ONI-S3 wrote:


On the flip side, I don't really believe the box needed to be that large. The box contents could essentially fit in half the space; in fact, it demonstrably could if they had of printed the terrain markers on 4 A5 sheets instead of 2 A4. I can see why they would do this, as if it were half the size I think that people would question the value, and the ships (due to their straight edges) really do compress down deceptively well. Regardless, the value is great, the models beautiful, the rules tight, the shipping excellent, the behind the scenes podcasts and interviews around the internet welcome. I'm very pleased!

I wouldn't have minded the box size if it was at all useful, but it's really more of a sleeve for the two smaller boxes inside. Great for display on the shelf of your local game store, useless once you open it up.

I'm pretty happy with the game overall, though. We're planning to get our first games in tonight.

I was looking at some unboxing last night. How thick are the base fire arc marker sheets? Are they really thick like x-wing base insets? Or just normal laminated cardstock?

Also, how is damage tracked for fighter squadrons? Do they have wounds/hitpoints, damage states (fine, damaged, destroyed), or just one failed roll and dead?

Honestly the Warstore deal might get me....Lord knows I've moved enough random stuff in my garage at this point that I'm sitting on a healthy hobby budget so I won't even feel like I might have better places for it

 Hulksmash wrote:
Honestly the Warstore deal might get me....Lord knows I've moved enough random stuff in my garage at this point that I'm sitting on a healthy hobby budget so I won't even feel like I might have better places for it

Yeah, it's really, really tempting to drop my Miniature Market order and swap to Warstore this weekend.

What is the warstore deal compared with MM?

Hmmm....between shipping and it not being a full 20% off on the game you're looking at a $15 difference between MM and Warstore. But the sprues price for the two sprues (basically one large ship upgrade) is $35 (at Warstore discount). So I guess it's a solid choice. Yeah, I think I'll be following up on this tomorrow.

 warboss wrote:
What is the warstore deal compared with MM?

I dont know what MM is offering, but the Warstore is offering a Gencon special deal to those ordering the box set during the dates on the convention. You get $40 of free models included with the starter set.

Free models included are:

o 1 x UNSC Epoch Heavy Carrier
o 3 x Paris Frigates
o 1 x Covenant ORS Heavy Cruiser
o 2 x SDV Heavy Corvettes
o Models include their Flight Stands, Tokens and Templates